During the month of February, the Belgian government published the “green book”, including conclusions about the payment of retirement pension, the challenge for the coming years. The conclusions were not a surprise, but only what everybody already knew, conclusions already done by economists and demographers. The government and some political people begin to admit that if people want to get a decent pension later, they have to save money. The problem of pension payment is due to the pyramid of ages. Indeed, the percentage of retired people is increasing. It means that the weight of pension costs on shoulders of active people will be more important.

An announced conclusion of the study was that people should work 3 years more than the average. It does not mean that the legal pension age would not be 65 years but 68 years. We have to know that in Belgium, only one person over ten who are between 55 and 60 years old is still working. We are one of the European countries where the activity rate of this generation is the lowest. How to explain such fact? In Belgium the tax level on work is very high. For somebody who spent few years or his full career in the same company, the lay off indemnities are very high. Of course, each employee agrees to have the maximum of indemnities, but should not be better to have less indemnity but to work for a longer time?

In Belgium as in every country, there were several restructuring processes in large companies, creating social disasters. It is always a painful hardship, where people are wondering how they will pay the bills at the end of the month. Most of them, who were more than fifty five years old, were retired anticipatively. By hearing some politicians, I have the feeling they were considering this as a gift, the fact that people who were wrongfully fired, merit to be retired anticipatively. Does it mean that everybody is necessarily happy to stop working when he is fifty five years old? Does it not mean that you are considered as too old, and then useless? Some studies showed that people who were retired anticipatively, by their own or by force, have a lower quality of live after few years. So to be retired anticipatively is not precisely a gift.

It is of course more difficult for people with lower qualifications to find a job when they have a certain age. But on the other side, with such view I explained before, the qualities and knowledge acquired by experience are not valued at all. In a previous posting, I was talking about the employability, meaning that each worker needs to gain in knowledge and expertise in order to move with the environment changes, to acquire tools and develop capabilities in order to face new challenges. The combination of experience and trainings provides added value and know how for each worker and as consequence for the company too.

It has to be remembered that the education is also important, that everybody needs to have enough chances to start in the active life. There is a lot improvement to be done on that level, when we are noting that in a city like Brussels, capital of Europe, there is around 20 percent of workless people, and for young people who are between 15 and 24 years old count around 35 percent of workless people.

Work is a right, and the government should take initiative in order to give chances to everybody to get dignity to have a job, by empowering the education, by promoting entrepreneurship, by encouraging social and economical initiatives. Work is the way to ensure independence to everybody. It is only on this base that we can maintain a sustainable social system.

Work is a right, and should be more considered as this and not as a constraint. It is a constraint if you do not like what you do, or if you are not considered for what you are doing. Confucius said: “Choose a work you like, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

For some of us, 2010 is already there, for the others, it will be in few hours.It is the time of good resolutions for the New Year, it is also the time to have a look to the past year, to make a statement of all the major events of our respective life. Based on that statement, it is the time to write another page or another chapter of the book of our life, to materialize our dreams in sustainable projects.

It is a matter of fact that 2009 was a difficult year, maybe harder for some of us. A lot of people lost their jobs. The consequences of the financial crisis of 2008 took effect later and will probably still have effect in 2010. By materializing our dreams, it is probably the way to get off to a new start, to face new challenges and opportunities. If these new year should remain difficult about the quantity of opportunities, let us improve the quality of then and the pleasure to do it, the pleasure to expand experiences, giving us the possibility to acquire and to use capacities and competences, in order to meet other challenges.

Should we think about this once a year, when celebrating the New Year ? Let us consider each day as a new start, each day as a day full of expectation and projects. To write interesting chapters of our life, we need first to write nice sentences with words reflecting our dreams and expectations.

And what about me ? 2009 was a hard but interesting year. It was the opportunity for me to launch this blog. One of my goals was to maintain the effort to post articles on a regular basis. The maintenance of a blog is a long term exercise, asking perseverance and discipline. But it is an interesting experience, and I can see already some concrete results. This is the last post of my blog of 2009, and will pursue the exercise and improve the quality for 2010. The only way to reach such goal is to practice.

I whish you a Happy New Year 2010, full of happiness and dreams for you and for your families.

Often, we are hearing people saying it was better before, when they were youngs. Sometime, when we have a look to the world, we could think in such way, when we are looking to the financial crisis, the environmental issues, and many other things.

Was it really better before? Should we go back to the past?

Until the beginning of the 20th century in the Western countries, and still today in some countries over the world, the children were obliged to work, when they were only 12 years old. Some of them never went to school and had no chance to have a long life. The work they had to do was very hard. They were not workers but rather slaves working in very bad conditions. For instance, the hard work in the coal mines cost a lot of people their life. The safety conditions and policies did not exist in this time.

Since that time, a lot of things happened. The technological developments contribute to reduce the hardness of some work. The people works in better conditions. But the technological developments have not only positive, but also negative consequences. For instance, the automotive industry increased her production capacities with less people. Does it mean that finally, the automation and the technologies should be rejected? Do not forget that these last 20 years, the information and communication technologies have expanded on an exponential way, creating new activities and new jobs.

It is obvious that the world is changing a bit more everyday. The difficult time we are facing with the economical crisis, the environmental challenges and the humanitarian questions, represents good opportunities to innovate, to change some models in our economy, in our environment, to move to a better world. Change is the motor of innovation. With all the progress done everyday in medicine, technologies, it should be possible to live in a world where everybody could live in dignity. All the acquired experiences acquired and the drawn conclusions about the past, the history, should be used to redefine new societal projects. It is just a question to become an actor and not stay as a spectator, to understand that our economy should be in the service of people and not the people in the service of the economy. Financial profit make only cense to ensure the continuity of projects contributing to the development of a sustainable world. Money should be considered as a tool and not as a goal.

How will we move these next years ? Shall we say in few years that it was better before? Wait and see, to see if the people are able to learn.

As many of you, I decided to launch a blog. This is the result of a long thinking process, and after reading articles and books about the subject.
To build and maintain a blog is an investment in time, and very often, some blogs are let without activities after few months or few weeks.
One factor of motivation is to exchange and share ideas, reflections, with other people. This could happen not only by publishing postings on a regular basis, but also by proposing interesting subjects, with an original treatment and a good quality level of style. These are the components to give rise to interesting comment and reactions, to develop interactivity with people.
The purpose of this blog is to share discussions about subjects related to our professional and personal life, both of then are related. We are living difficult but interesting time, which should motivate us to bring new ideas, new solutions, in areas like personal development, sustainable development, economy, social media, to develop creativity. Creativity is defined as not only create new things, but also to think about things on another way.
This is the challenge I would like to share with you.